Steve Morgan refused to comment on Wednesday on his bid to take the business he founded in 1974 private. Photograph: Martin Rickett/PA

Redrow chairman Steve Morgan has played down a barnstorming set of full-year results, just weeks after unveiling a bid to take the housebuilder private.

Pre-tax profits shot up by 70% in the year to June despite what the company described as a "challenging marketplace".

Morgan – who also owns Championship football club Wolverhampton Wanderers – said of the results: "Everything is relative. Relative to where we've been in the last three or four years, the results do look brilliant. They've got a long way to go."

Morgan approached Redrow's board last month with a provisional offer of 152p a share, valuing the company at £562m. The shares hovered just below that on Wednesday at 151.8p, suggesting shareholders expect the bid to proceed.

Morgan – who refused to comment on the approach on Wednesday – already owns 40.4% of the business he founded. He is backed by Toscafund, which holds another 16.7% of the shares, and Penta Capital.

Senior independent director Alan Jackson said on Wednesday: "We've said to shareholders, please take no action. There's no certainty an offer will be made or what the terms of that offer will be." The deadline for the consortium to table a firm bid is 28 September.

Redrow, one of the smaller London-listed builders, posted pre-tax profits of £43m "against the backdrop of a challenging marketplace". Revenues rose 6% to £479m driven by a 15% increase in average selling prices. The company said the average selling price of one of its private homes was £204,100 last year.

Morgan said the outlook for the housing industry remained challenging. "We are seeing an improvement; this year was better than last year. The incline in the road is so slight you hardly notice it," he said.

The difficulty in getting mortgages "remains the main drag to housing market recovery", he added, alongside weak consumer confidence because of the UK's fragile economic state. Morgan welcomed the introduction of the NewBuy scheme – which allows house buyers to secure a 95% mortgage on new homes – but said mortgage rates were still too high.

Morgan also applauded moves by the government to loosen planning laws and scrap requirements for developers to build affordable homes. He said Redrow had two or three sites that would not have been profitable to build on under previous regulations, but "on the back of that announcement we are able to get moving".

"We definitely welcome the initiative. It's one that is helping pave the way for a less tough ride for the industry, but there's a long way to go."

Morgan founded Redrow in 1974 and floated the business 20 years later. He left in 2000 but returned in 2009 after a boardroom coup.